At a Freescale developer event in Taiwan

Here at VIA we like to learn from others, and our ecosystem is full of very successful examples we can learn from. Just like we were very happy to see RaspberryPi in Taiwan recently, this week we’ve joined the “Designing with Freescale” developer event in Hsinchu.

Freescale developer event in Hsinchu, Taiwan

Hsinchu is probably a very good choice of a place, as it has the largest concentration of technology companies and industrial research in Taiwan. This is in some contrast to that local tech startups are concentrated in the capital, Taipei. There’s a lot of difference in scale and resources; at different scale teams require different things (naturally).

This developer event was focused in getting across the vision and expertise of Freescale, from their microcontroller line (and vision of their use in IoT) to their powerful ARM microprocessors. VIA has a couple of very successful boards that use Freescale in the core, like the recent VAB-820 and was very interesting to put things into context. Lots of companies, other Freescale partners represented themselves, and was eye-opening to hear how differently people approached the same hardware because they wanted to use them differently.

A day of technical talks

Besides the technical talks, there were almost a dozen stalls with partners exhibiting their solutions. I think the main keywords were Internet of Things and Home Automation. Lots of experimentation is going on in that space and while the starting point is pretty much the same for everyone, the solution they come up with have a crazy variety. Can’t wait to see more of these ideas in action and in the devices and buildings around me. It is a great platform to exchange these ideas. Such knowledge sharing experiences can encourage a lot of people in the younger generation. Additional info regarding such developments needs to be discussed so that people participate and get the best knowledge in a good form. Technical ideas get to develop in such platforms.

Product showcasing

Talking to different teams I was amazed how different paths teams take. Almost as many different attitudes to licensing, hardware choices, business models, customer relations as people I met. This chaotic environment on the other hand inspires a lot of exploration. Ever since the event I’m rehashing what our team can learn from the real-time OS vendors, the digital signage companies in Singapore, component makers, large scale IC manufacturers, all of whom had interesting insights to offer.

Looking at the big picture on the apropos of this event, not every company is aiming at enabling a thriving ecosystem around what they offer, it is a major undertaking. But when it works, it’s a sight to behold, and a much needed force multiplier for all partners involved. We are very glad to be part of it and contribute!

VIA is in a very special position, though. It had evolved a lot in the last two decades or so, and doing vastly different things now than used to. When I’ve talked to them, people wondered at this event why are we there. A bit of intro to our vision, to our online store, and to this site, and I invariably received big nods of understanding. It felt very good to get on the same page this quickly, while it is very much an opportunity: we need to communicate clearer not just to our customers, but to our industry partners as well to unlock the potential that an ecosystem brings. Lots to do ahead!